


Glitch in the System: Shades of Grey

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ethics, F/F, Moral Dilemmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-21 00:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13729272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: A two-part ethical navelgazing extravaganza, starring Widowmaker.Part 1: Do Androids Dream?, by K.Part 2: I and Talon, by K.Both titles are obvious and less obvious, dumb-pun references to installments of the Blade Runner franchise by Philip K. Dick and K.W. Jeter, respectively.





	1. Do Androids Dream?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By K.  
> Questionable ethics happen.

Everything was going according to plan. **  
**

Neatly aligned with the outermost edge of a Reykjavik high-rise rooftop, Widowmaker observed with hawkish intensity the topmost floor of the building across the street. There was nothing remarkable about it, save for a pinpoint of dull orange light blinking in time with the progression of an elevator upwards from floor to floor. She could almost hear the old-fashioned ding no doubt accompanying its arrival at each floor; could almost picture the mundanity of the cramped chrome and faux-wood paneling within. Then again,  _that_ was only remarkable because she knew who was waiting beyond the sliding doors.

She scanned and re-scanned the office ahead of her, its layout easily discernible through the ceiling-high windows which comprised its perimeter. Not that she  _needed_  the advantage — she knew what it looked like, had studied the blueprints stolen by Sombra and supplied by Akande until she could describe the location of their objective from memory. Little indicated the presence of life in that space aside from the continued disappearance and reappearance of that same, orange light: a steady, artificial breath amid the stillness of potted ferns and polished laminate floors.

That and the security guards, she supposed with a huff that almost gave way to a chuckle. Neither the enforcement of security nor the application of the word “guard” were truly applicable; they were privately contracted, ill-trained, and almost entirely unarmed. This, too, she learned from Sombra’s findings, and balked at the revelation. Not only did she find their objective suspect; she found its attainment exceedingly banal in the lack of a challenge it presented.

As the elevator light proceeded at an even clip from “15” to “16”, she shifted on her elbows, rolling her neck to prevent the soreness borne of constant tension. The guards sat at a clearance desk adjacent the elevator, chatting idly; behind them, the floor split in a squared U-shape, with a left and right hallway. Widowmaker recalled that the left hallway included the entrance to the break room at the front and center of the floor. Its presence, unfortunately, obscured entirely her view of that corridor.

The hallway facing her was only that, and terminated in a locked door which required electronic keycards to access. The left side ended similarly, each port leading to the computer lab comprising the rest of the floor. Between the near-linear floorpan, the lack of concealment, and the absence of environmental opportunities for makeshift cover, strategy - even rudimentary deliberation - was hardly necessary.

She wished her return to the field hadn’t been for this. Whatever  _this_ was. She had her suspicions, and loathed them ardently.

“Lobby secure.”

Gabriel’s voice cut clear across Talon’s shared communications channel, a burst of iron and gravel strewn over the cold silence preceding it. His role in their mission - locking down the ground-floor entrances and securing those present as hostages - included the most variability in terms of difficulty and outcome. His success, now confirmed, ensured the ease of their work.

“Hostages in the utility closet.”

“The doors?” Moira asked in turn, as smooth in her intonation as Reaper was abrasive. Behind her voice, Widowmaker heard the telltale ping of the elevator bell, its chime coinciding with the illumination of the number “18”. She rolled her eyes at the question. Of  _course_  Gabriel secured the doors. That Moira could be so patronizing even on the job was galling on its own; that she would be so to a fellow member of the Inner Council - a member with infinitely more tactical experience - was mind-boggling.

Gabriel’s initial response was limited to a snort, the sneer preceding it so strongly implied the sniper could picture it with searing clarity.

“Locked,” he replied at last.

“Good,” the geneticist confirmed. “Lacroix?”

As the elevator light blinked from “19” to “20”, Widowmaker pressed herself flat against the cement and closed one eye, focusing her view of the building ahead through her scope. Were the guards remotely aware of their surroundings, she wouldn’t be hard to notice against the backsplash of the midday sun.

Not that it mattered. Even if they did see her, they’d be dead in an instant.

“I am in position,” she said.

“And?”

“Three guards. One civilian. More, perhaps, in the break room.”

Moira began respond, but Gabriel’s low growl cut her off. “And on the other floors, no doubt. I’ll sweep. Head off anyone who might make their way to you.” The scientist’s perceptibly irritated “affirmative” coincided with the movement of the light from “21” to “22”.

Only one floor remained.

“There are two guards stationed at the clearance desk,” Widowmaker explained, leveling her reticle on the temple of the guard nearest her. “Sombra.”

“Aye.”

“When the elevator opens, take the one on your left. The right is mine.”

Though concealed by the matte chrome of the elevator doors, Sombra’s smile and the easy confidence informing it was plain as day. “You got it, spider.”

“ _Bonne chance_.”

When the shaft doors opened, the car beyond was empty.

Widowmaker fired.

A single bullet pierced the glass across the street, then the skull of the closest guard behind it.  

The assassin watched through the cobweb-crackling glass as horror registered on the remaining target’s face: first at the spray of red mist where another human sat a second earlier; then at the apparition of Moira before him, one hand curled about his throat to ensure the success of Sombra’s execution.

Widowmaker barely heard the rattle of the machine-pistol’s fire - if not for the distance, then for the sound of her own pulse in her ears.

“Take the right hallway,” she purred, watching the pair comply in unspoken acknowledgement. This was the standard for these sorts of infiltrations. Widowmaker’s removal afforded them not only cover fire, but insight into the movements of enemy and civilian agents.

Peering over her scope, she chanced a glimpse at the lab ahead of them, at the remaining guard and lone programmer scrambling for the doors and yelling at one another all the while. As they cleared the room, the guard shoved something into the programmer’s hands - a taser, from the looks of it - and took the far door, pointing their charge toward its opposite.

Across the street, the sniper clucked her tongue as she nestled her cheek against the butt stock of her rifle, securing the weld between one weapon and the other.  _Idiots_.

“Left hallway: one guard. Personnel ahead of you. I will take care of the former.”

With coordinated grace even Widowmaker could deign to call balletic, Sombra bolted forward, hurling a translocator beacon over the developer’s head and into the lab beyond as the door opened. Moira continued forward, acknowledging neither the disappearance of her employee nor the woman before her holding the taser aloft in shaky, untrained hands.

For a moment, Widowmaker thought the doctor almost smiled.

Then she was gone, evaporating into violet shadow as the civilian fired, deploying the weapon’s flickering prongs. Finding no mark, they clattered to the floor, the force of their ejection petering to an underwhelming, embarrassing stillness. Moira was behind her in a flash, a sudden composite of sharp angles and pale elegance. By the time her target noticed, she had already begun the rapid acceleration of life into decay. Sombra, reappearing behind her, completed the process with a well-aimed round of burst fire over her shoulder.

At the front end of the hall, the last security guard inched around the corner, gun held to his chest as he moved, presumably, toward the right hall in attempted ambush. He hardly cleared it before the Widow’s Kiss shattered the already-broken window and his skull with it.

“Hold,” the sniper commanded, pushing herself to her knees. Deploying her visor and its infra-sight, she scanned the building for any imminent threats to the other women. “Someone in the lounge. Hiding. Others on floors… six, twelve, fifteen, and twenty — Gabriel?”

As she awaited his response, Widowmaker watched Sombra depart the geneticist’s side and return to the lab, waving open the electronic lock with trademark nonchalance and setting to work at the nearest terminal. Then, she watched as Moira doubled back down the hallway, tracing its perimeter until she arrived at the break room door on the opposite side.

She watched in screaming crimson as the scientist pressed herself against the wall, opened the door with one hand, and deployed a biotic orb through the crack with the other.

The mark was dead in seconds, their heat signature expiring in perfect synchronicity with the orb’s.

By her count, nearly seven years had passed since Moira accompanied Talon on deployment. When last they worked together, it was in the wake of Widowmaker’s own reprogramming. Then, the geneticist served an advisory role, ensuring not only the stability and success of Talon’s freshest experiment, but its compliance.  _That_ Moira almost seemed human, even in her resolute stolidity. She was by no means kinder, but a palpable determination informed her movements, a drive Widowmaker could almost -  _almost_  - admire. Now, there was only removal: an unfeeling, automatic progression from point to point along the secret trajectory of her own ambition.

She found Moira’s coldness especially unpleasant in its similarity to her own, altered approach to the world around her. Widowmaker frowned as she identified that discomfiting similitude.

“I’ll get the other floors,” Gabriel replied at last. “Eyes on the elevator and stairwell. I’ll comms if I need backup.”

“Affirmative,” she said. Rising to her feet, the assassin shouldered her rifle, leveled her grappling hook on the empty window frame across the street, and fired as she stepped off the ledge.

The building was quiet now — so quiet, in fact, it would be easy to assume - shattered windows aside - nothing was amiss. These smaller, more straightforward missions were typically silent affairs: infiltration, recovery, extraction.  Once things were underway, communication between higher-ranking operatives often died in a curious foil of their work. This was in part due to a mandate to avoid unnecessary chatter and in part a side effect of the trust shared among elite agents. Widowmaker didn’t need to see Sombra to know she was working at a million yards a minute, bypassing layer upon layer of encrypted security protocols. She didn’t need to see Gabriel to know he was making the rounds, stalking wolflike through fluorescent-lit halls in search of prey. Moira… Widowmaker didn’t know, and endeavored to neither care nor mind. When all went according to plan - when there  _was_  a plan - communication became vestigial as every soldier performed their assigned tasks, each a deadly cog in a perfect machine.

That said, there was little to accomplish in watching an otherwise stationary elevator.

Deploying a venom mine against the bottom corner of the shaft frame, the sniper made her way to the computer lab.

As predicted, Sombra - all work, for once - sat hunched over one of the desktop units, one hand flying across its keyboard while the other autonomously navigated a series of fluorescent holoscreens. Moira loomed behind her, hands folded behind her back as she watched the hacker work with mild curiosity.

“Almost in,” Sombra murmured, glancing quickly over the shoulder not occupied by the lanky scientist.

“ _Te presse pas_ ,” Widowmaker yawned, taking in the room. It was mostly unimpressive: a standard open office floor plan with a handful of desks, each their own independent consoles, and a few hardware workstations set against one wall. Those, she observed, were littered with all sorts of errata: from microchips, circuitboards, and wires all the way to a handful of bodiless Omnic heads running the gamut from pre-war models to present-day versions.

“Done!” Sombra chirped, hopping from her seat. “All yours, doc.”

Moira took her place after she stepped aside, sneering at the nickname as Sombra sidled up to Widowmaker. “Still got it,” she affirmed, a pleased smirk tugging at her lips.

Widowmaker nodded her acknowledgement, but didn’t avert her gaze from workstations and their curious accoutrements.

“You were correct,” she said, glancing to her partner. “Or so it appears.”

The hacker shrugged. “Doc’s lead. I just confirmed.” Behind her, Moira visibly bristled at the repeated use of “doc”. Sombra ignored it. Loudly.

Paying little heed to the exchange, Widowmaker crossed at last to the opposite wall and lifted one of the Omnic heads with care. She turned it over in her hands, noting the open ports at the base of the skull. Their protective coverings were long-gone, exposing intricate writing and interior sockets - some occupied, others vacant, a few destroyed.

“This failsafe,” Widowmaker murmured, tracing the cranial opening’s edge with one gloved thumb. “You are going to reverse-engineer it?” She knew the answer, of course; had read the mission dossier thoroughly and found its lack of technical detail specious.

“Something like that?” Sombra answered, the reply as much a question as the sniper’s initial inquiry. Widowmaker knew Sombra was as uniformed as she was. The information provided was focused almost exclusively on the infiltration itself, with only a one-sentence synopsis providing any further illumination: “ _Recover proprietary software created to secure the Omnic central processing system against outside influence and reverse its programming it to ensure obedience_.” Widowmaker pressed Sombra in private to dig for more, but despite her better efforts, the hacker reported only frustration in a steady string of expletives. In lieu of intel, they committed to the mission with the intent of learning more.

Luckily, this conversation wasn’t initiated in the hopes Sombra would provide new insight.

“The software currently in development will prevent external manipulation of the Omnic processor controlling autonomous thought - the brain, if you will,” Moira murmured behind them, navigating a plethora of desktop windows with unwavering focus even as she spoke. “We intend to use the research, if not the framework of the program itself, to cement our control of older models whose sapience is either debatable or nonexistent. War and pre-war models, for example. Thus, we ensure our ordinances aren’t vulnerable to outside actors. Simple, really, and there’s considerable opportunity for further application. ”

Widowmaker frowned at the elaboration, finding the implications of their work exactly as ominous as she suspected. “‘Debatable’?” she repeated. “We have seen war-era Omnics with demonstrable  _autonomie_. How will you know?  _Que ferez-vous avec eux_?”

She didn’t look up to acknowledge it, but she felt the geneticist’s pinioning glare like so many needles. “We are not here to discuss  _ethics_ , Lacroix,” the Irishwoman sneered, spitting the word like a curse. “I believe your commanding officer instructed you to  _watch the elevator._  I would hate to report your insubordination.”

Narrowing amber eyes on the other woman, Widowmaker lingered exactly long enough to ensure her disdain was felt, then excused herself from the room. Sombra followed, joining the sniper at the front of the floor.

It was exactly as bad as she thought. The actualization of that concern kicked up a storm of misplaced adrenaline and aimless frustration: a cold fire, searing a path along her spine to the base of her skull.

It felt like anger. Or, what she remembered of it.

“What an  _asshole_ ,” Sombra grumbled, setting a gentle hand on the assassin’s shoulder and finding only a snarl of muscle betraying her clenched fist. Widowmaker, subsumed by the echo of repressed emotion, stared levelly at the steel doors ahead of them, wholly unaware of the other woman’s touch.

“Hey.  _Araña_ ,” Sombra pressed - softer this time, more concerned.

Widowmaker returned her attention at last. “You know she will not stop at sentient Omnics.”

Sombra visibly struggled with her reply, chewing her words. “Look, Widow. I get your concern. I’m not shitting on that. But… the older models, they’re just toaster-ovens with guns. I don’t think even Moira can make that leap. Not without my help.”

“The software was  _intended_  for current models,” Widowmaker countered. “You trust her that much?”

“Come on. You really think they’re gonna’ try some crazy mind control shit?” Sombra asked, unconvinced.

Widowmaker balked at the question, blinking. She thought it obvious, the progression from manipulating sentient bots to sapient ones, controlling inorganic yet arguably  _human_  life. What would stop them from making the subsequent, equally officious leap to actual, flesh-and-blood humans? That question loomed ominously, the portent of a terrible storm: if Moira could make the transition from genetic alteration to the modification of behavior and thought, she and whoever employed her would be unstoppable. Though Omnic anatomy was considerably different than that of humans, experimentation with one system could no doubt provide a foundation on which one could, eventually, establish control over the other. That prospect felt like an unasked-for promise of improvement upon the framework that facilitated the sniper’s own existence.

“Look at this through my eyes,” Widowmaker rejoined, exhaling the suggestion with the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “What does it look like to you?”

Sombra shrugged. “You tell me.”

“It looks like I am the first step in something that is much worse than genetic reprogramming. They destroyed the bridge between thinking and feeling; what if they can destroy one or both of those processes entirely?”

Sombra’s indifference faded in increments, replaced by the graduating knit of her brows. “Oh.”

“Precisely.”

A moment passed between them, thunderous in its quietude as Sombra, arms crossed and deep in thought, stared at some faraway point beyond the floor. Widowmaker, uneasy with the shadow of anger slithering through her limbs, turned her back on the shorter woman and crossed to the empty, ceiling-high window frame. She watched from on high as the civilians on the street below went about their day, unaware of the events unfolding around them and of the machinations which, if she was right, could radically alter the lives of millions.

“ _Lo siento_ ,” Sombra said, joining her. “It’s a good point.”

“You understand? At least I am permitted to think. We are talking about something much worse,  _cherie_.”

Sombra nodded. “Yeah. I get it.”

“I am uncomfortable with how…upsetting I find this,” Widowmaker admitted, apropos of nothing. “ _Ne se sent pas bien_. What is the phrase? A rock and a hard place?”

“Yeah. But you’re aware of it.  _We’re_ aware. So, we keep our eyes on Moira. Like we weren’t already.” Sombra slid her hand through the sniper’s, squeezing gently. “I got you, spider. I screw with Omnics all the time, but there’s a big fucking difference between putting someone to sleep and controlling how they think. If I gotta’ have a hand in it, it’s not gonna’ happen at all.  _Lo juro_.”

Before Widowmaker could respond, static cut across their comms channel.

“All clear,” Gabriel huffed. “How much longer?”

Widowmaker and Sombra turned their collective gaze toward the office door behind them.

“Ten minutes,” Moira replied.

“Head to the roof when you’re ready. I’ll page extraction.”

“Affirmative.”

Sombra offered her partner a sideways glance. “You wanna’ head up?”

“Please,” Widowmaker replied. “The air will help.”

“Yeah, all this air coming in from the window you broke just isn’t doing it for me,” the hacker grinned. “Come on. I’ll make us _atole_ when we get back to base and you can read me your fancy Victor Hugo shit.”

Rolling her eyes, the sniper followed Sombra as she led them hand in hand up the stairs.

Everything went according to plan. She just wished, for once, it hadn’t.


	2. I and Talon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By K.   
> Personal understanding happens.

Despite Talon’s success, the Reykjavik mission left Widowmaker quietly reeling. She kept her cool as their crew - Gabriel, Moira, Sombra, and a handful of operatives who assisted with Reaper’s lockdown of the ground floor - awaited extraction atop the roof of the high rise, a paper-thin veneer of calm masking the tumult beneath. She felt simultaneously like a timed explosive and the poor soul sent to defuse it, finding either end of the metaphorical spectrum frighteningly unfamiliar. **  
**

When their transport arrived, she wasted no time in making herself scarce. Six hours’ travel wound up as she was would be Hell for everyone, least among them herself. Her conversation with Sombra helped to a point, but their mid-mission _tête-à-tête_  hardly afforded her the time necessary to explore the rat’s nest of tangents spawned by their objective. Some contemplation prior to the inevitable debrief would hopefully allow her to process, regulate, and soldier on.

Ignoring Gabriel’s questioning gaze, the sniper deposited her uncased rifle in her usual seat adjacent him. He turned as she brushed past, the creak of leather shifting with his weight and betraying the motion.

“You going to unload that thing?” he asked, expectant.

Widowmaker didn’t acknowledge the question. She didn’t need to. This was their game, its rules codified by years of repetition: the easy rejection of veiled inquiries, the tacit understanding of the question “are you okay?” and its unspoken rejoinder of “no”. It always ended there. For nearly a decade, they engaged in this pitiful sport; for nearly a decade, they accepted the pale shadow of concern as “good enough”, despite its never really being so. From time to time, they would stumble into clumsy expressions of sympathy: her cooking for him by twilight, his closeness as they stood atop some decrepit ruin and watched the world burn. But those were rare. More often than not, these brief exchanges served as the norm: non-question, non-answer, hollow acceptance.

Her relationship with Gabriel, she realized, was profoundly unlike what she shared with Sombra, its foundation of communication so constant and increasingly clear that the assassin marveled she could maintain it at all. How they managed to cultivate anything amid so fallow a landscape defied the odds engineered to favor desolation, and Widowmaker guarded that anomalous, improbable oasis like the rarity it was.

Still, as the bulkhead doors to the observation deck whispered open ahead of her, she heard him set to removing the magazine from the abandoned weapon - a small testament to their own, curious shade of partnership defined by mechanized clicks and the ex-soldier’s muffled grumbling.

Predictably, the lower-ranking agents who deployed alongside her fell silent as she crossed the threshold to the glass-enclosed platform. Unlike Gabriel or Akande, acknowledgement of her entrance wasn’t required, but it happened nonetheless: a muffled “‘evening”, a nod, a meeting of the eyes averted as quickly as it occurred. Far from protocol, these greetings were moored exclusively in fear. As if by clockwork, the group dispersed, then left the deck altogether moments later. She almost minded that sort of reaction once, found it childish and even alienating. That was years ago, when she was so much closer to the wreckage of one life than the reality of the other. Now, with both her reputation before her and especially with her mind racing faster than she could follow, the assassin found the flight response she inspired in her lessers purely beneficial.

Alone at last, Widowmaker forced herself into some semblance of relaxation, leaning on her forearms against the deck railing. There was refuge here, amid the dim lights dotting the ceiling perimeter and the landscape kilometers below. Even better was the steady drone of the ship’s propulsion jets, their low thrum drowning out the unrelenting cascade of her own thoughts.

Their triumph in Reykjavik suggested ethical possibilities which troubled her not only in their potential ramifications, but in their troubling her in the first place. The implications of both seeped through the cracks in her neural infrastructure, eating acidlike through the regulated cold of reconditioning to reveal some long dormant, fundamental human emotion with which she was intimately, artificially unfamiliar.

Pawing through unfamiliar corridors of thought, Widowmaker questioned the origins of that feeling. Rarely, if ever, did the world’s most capable sniper consider objective morality beyond the confines of literature; it occurred to her now how truly atypical that was. Then again, she was far from typical. Her inability to connect cause with both its physiological and emotional effects left her ill-equipped to construct for herself any sort of ethical or values-oriented framework. The existences of points A, B, and C in a given situation were observable, but how they connected to one another remained always partially, if not mostly, obscured. Even with an increasingly well-armed toolbox, she was always ill-equipped.

Talon wanted someone incapable of experiencing remorse, empathy, or guilt, and they certainly got their wish. Still, whether she did or ever could experience or express those things in no way precluded her from exploring her own boundaries; she had merely never thought to try.

Whose fault that was could be argued.

As she watched the world pass her by, Widowmaker considered her own, private world and its foundation of death, manipulation, and deceit. Did any of it even kind of bother her?

Far from a concern, murder was the craft which gave shape to her life. It came to her as naturally as breathing, each kill a performance that improved and elaborated upon its precursors with morbid virtuosity. Her art had always been borne of movement - of precision, personal mastery, and attention to detail; the only difference between her old medium and the new was the latter produced an enduring, indelible mark on the lives of tens, hundreds, sometimes thousands.

Lies she accepted as a necessity. Information could make or break a person in much the same way a bullet could, and Widowmaker knew intimately that rule applied not only to targets, but to those who hunted them. What mattered was the ability to remove a given mask - to know oneself and one’s company well enough to gauge who saw the person behind the façade. This became complicated as she  stumbled across the weaknesses within her programming and the tender wounds of prohibited personhood beneath them. It became even more difficult with Sombra added to the mix. These, at least, were challenges the sniper accepted.

But slavery? Its analogues? That  _did_  bother her, in concept and in how intimately close to home it felt. Briefly, she questioned whether that would be the case had Sombra never provided her the details of her reprogramming, quickly discarding the uncomfortable thought with the assumption she would have found out on her own eventually.

The quiet hiss of the doors behind her precluded any exploration of the viability of that hypothesis. Widowmaker turned, muscles coiling as she prepared to demand solitude from whoever entered.

“Hey,” Sombra greeted her, a tired smile drifting across her lips. It wasn’t quite a balm, per se, but the assassin allowed herself to release that particular tension, its dissolution carried away by a heavy sigh.

The other woman blinked, her grin giving way to the gentle knit of her brow. “You okay?”

Widowmaker struggled to reply. The short answer was “no”, but the short answer was insufficient. The longer answer was a mess of disconnected yet inexorably tangled odds and ends. Even with a few minutes’ tugging at that knot, she was no closer to describing adequately her discomfort. “I do not know,” she admitted.

“Still fucked up over the Omnic thing?” the hacker asked, joining her against the railing so they stood shoulder to shoulder. It was as close as they came when there was any chance Moira might turn the corner, but Widowmaker found even that minimal proximity comforting. Not a panacea, by any means, but she recognized - with a few months’ study, of course - the subtle insinuation of compassion and its soothing effect.

She tilted her head to one side, then the other, as if her quandary stood before her — a physical thing to be examined. “I think so, yes,” she replied, eyes narrowed on that nonexistent something.

Sombra raised one eyebrow. “You  _think_  so?”

“ _Oui_. My concerns remain. But, I believe I have moved on to  _crise existentielle_  territory.” A pause. “As much as I am able,” she added with bitter amusement.

Casting a glance over the room to ensure their safety from any prying ears, Sombra lowered her voice. “You wanna’ talk about it?”

Widowmaker pushed herself away from the hacker’s side and took a few, aimless steps toward the center of the room. Unsurprisingly, it did nothing to assuage the amplification of her usual restlessness.

“I have been  _this_ ,” she began, waving loosely at herself, “for years. It is strange to me that I am only now asking about right and wrong. I am uncertain whether this is protocol or negligence.”

“I think you’re a few dead Shambali leaders past that, spider,” Sombra quipped.

The sniper rolled her eyes. “ _My_  right and  _my_  wrong.”

She caught the tail end of the other woman nodding her understanding as she turned to face her anew. “If you’re thinking about it at all, it’s not protocol,” the spy wagered. “But that shit’s gotta’ come to you. You can’t know if something doesn’t jive until it’s in your face. So, you got a thing in your face, and you can file it under ‘do not want’.  _Ta da_.”

Widowmaker frowned. “That sounds like negligence.”

Following in her footsteps, Sombra cut across the floor to join her at the center of the deck, reinstating that daring bit of closeness.

“You’re gonna’ need to cut yourself some slack on this one,  _araña_ ,” she murmured gently. “You didn’t know shooting people in the face wouldn’t bother you until you did it. Talon might have put a wall between your endocrine system and your cold little heart, but no amount of engineering can make a person not have that knee-jerk ‘nope’ reaction to something that’s not for them.”

Widowmaker couldn’t deny that one, but found herself yet unconvinced. “ _D’accord_ ,” she shrugged, finding no better contribution to the discussion.

Sombra grinned. “Look. That shit’s reflexes, and you’re  _all_  reflexes. Besides: of course the Omnic thing bugs you. That’s your lived experience right there - and a shittier version of it. You think it blows?  _It probably does_.”

For some reason, that particular kernel of validation eased the knot in her chest like nothing before it. She was eminently qualified to evaluate the potential posed by Talon’s most recent acquisition and find it odious; after all, that potential, taken to its logical extent, resulted in an improvement upon her existence as a living prototype. She had learned to live as such. Knowing what she did now, Widowmaker couldn’t say she’d wish a life like hers for anyone.

“ _Merci_ ,” she exhaled. “This is helpful.”

Sombra’s smile, this time broad and sincere, felt like an unexpected cushion at the end of an hours-long fall. “You know, it’s kind of cool that you can think like that at all,” she added.

Widowmaker canted her head. “ _Pourquoi_?”

“It’s pretty close to empathy.”

“Empathy.”

“Yeah. You know, that thing you can’t feel.”

The sniper paused. That word - empathy - represented a void: a book resting on a shelf just beyond her reach. It, like the other emotions she couldn’t feel but experienced as as adrenaline or cold or fire or weight, wasn’t inconspicuous in its artificial absence, but its ghost was notably the opposite - glaring that it should be there at all, even if only as an echo.

She suspected it was not something she could nurture, nor was it something she  _cared_  to nurture. But it was there, and secret, and  _hers_.

“Hm.”

“What’s up?” Sombra asked, risking a single kiss agains the knuckles of one hand. “You got a face.”

“They are just so strange, these little understandings,” she replied.

It felt… good. Or something like it.

* * *

The inevitable debrief came somewhere near the middle of their flight, as unremarkable as the mission that preceded it. Their success guaranteed few, if any, expectations of the sniper within the next two or three days, and to Widowmaker’s surprise, Moira seemed to have decided against mentioning their brief but tense exchange. That she hadn’t forgotten it, however, was made plain in her occasional, pointed glances as she provided further directive.

“You will begin analyzing the data we recovered immediately,” she said, diverting her attention to Sombra ever so briefly before training mismatched eyes on Widowmaker. The assassin offered little in the way of acknowledgement other than the gentle crook of one inquisitive eyebrow.

“You got if,  _jefe_ ,” Sombra grinned, leaning forward on her elbows. “If its half as basic as their security, I’ll be done in no time.”

“That is the expectation,” the doctor replied. “My preference is that you should complete your assignment within the next forty-eight hours.”

The hacker practically laughed. “Give me twenty-four.”

* * *

“Lacroix!”

Cutting the farthest corner around the garden, Widowmaker glanced up from the dirt path to find Sombra, wrapped in  _her_  duvet on  _her_ balcony. In the day since their return from Iceland, the sniper returned as usual to the worn trail around the atrium, running until her mind stopped its wandering or her legs felt ready to give out beneath her. The hacker mentioned wanting to pop by that morning, but implied it wouldn’t be until later; Widowmaker, accordingly, went about her day.

Clearing the last straightaway toward the mansion, she came to a gradual stop, tilting her head to signal her curiosity.

“Come inside!” Sombra called, waving from beneath the comforter.

Sighing less out of inconvenience than a simple lack of an excuse, the sniper trotted up the steps toward the building, through its threshold, and onward to the west wing through a well-memorized maze of corridors. Shouldering open her bedroom door, Widowmaker offered Sombra that curious gaze anew.

“ _Qu’est-ce que le problème_?” she asked, toeing off her sneakers and kicking them beside the door.

“No problem,” Sombra replied. “C’mere.”

Widowmaker wrinkled her nose at the suggestion. “I am disgusting.”

Huffing, the hacker opened her blanket-swaddled arms in invitation. “Don’t care. Come on. Snug train’s waiting.”

Widowmaker stared at her a long, quiet moment, eyes narrowing as she struggled to reconcile the demand with her desperate dislike of touching  _anything_  when she’d just finished a workout. Sombra, impatient as ever, beckoned more frantically until she finally relented and crawled into bed. Sombra met her with still-open arms, which she wrapped effortlessly about the sniper’s shoulders.

“Got you something,” the hacker said, pressing a small, rectangular object into the sniper’s palm. Widowmaker blinked, digging that same hand out from beneath the blanket to consider the item surrendered to her: a lone thumb drive - a relic of decades past.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Flash drive. Antiquated USB-mounted storage device. Most computers don’t use ‘em anymore, especially with the advances in remote storage and proximity-based data transference. You’ll see ‘em every now and then on archival models, but they’re pretty rare nowadays.”

Widowmaker stared.

“You gave me a fossil.”

Sombra’s sly grin, present since her arrival, crept further across her lips. “Not quite.”

“Oh?”

“I gave you the only existing copy of the unadulterated intel we lifted in Reykjavik,” she explained.

Widowmaker’s heart faltered a moment - caught somewhere between an exuberant leap and a devastating drop she associated with dread. It was strange, that the focal point of her concern could be compressed and stored in such an unremarkable, outmoded device. It felt like holding the fate of millions in her hands - an amplification of the lethality she knew in a gun or a knife, made all the more insidious in its subtlety.

“What about  _le médecin_?” she managed at last.

Sombra chuckled, the laugh petering into her reply. “ _She’s_  getting a redacted copy. I edited some things, moved others around, got rid of some shit entirely; she’ll be able to do  _exactly_  what she set out to do, but any of the data that would allow anything more? Nah. She may still get there  _eventually_ , but what she’s getting isn’t going to help her do it.”

Widowmaker didn’t realize her own, fey smile until she opened her mouth to speak. “And you?”

“I got some choice bits, but I’m not really into controlling anyone through anything other than intel. It’s all you,  _araña_. Yours, to do with as you please.”

It was hard to call it a gift, but the subtext informing it - Sombra’s consideration, her implicitly putting her own neck on the line by altering the date given the Inner Council - those were as much a present as anything the hacker ever gave her. It was certainly more endearing than the very concept of autonomy, so irreverently saved within a container of cheap metal and cheaper plastic.

By this point, she accepted her moral conjecture was nestled firmly in hypothetical meandering, but the potential was still there. If anyone could exploit that possibility, it was Talon. Beyond that, she decided that the prospect of anyone acquiring a means to manipulate basic thought was repugnant. Widowmaker acknowledged her rationale was specious at best - better to deprive someone of life entirely than to bend it to another’s whim - but her dedication to it was possibly the most sincere conviction she ever knew.

She held the zip drive between both hands, by thumb and forefinger.

“Is it selfish, if I should think this is something no one should have? Self-serving,  _peut-être_?” she asked.

“Honestly? I don’t think it matters,” Sombra replied, pressing a kiss to one temple.

Widowmaker smiled, and pushed with her thumbs until the device snapped in half. Beside her, she felt the slow curl of the hacker’s grin against her ear. “I like the way you think,” she whispered.

“I do, too.”


End file.
